


History and Spirit Tales

by Drel_Murn



Series: Step By Step Background Constellation [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-07
Packaged: 2019-07-27 11:24:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16218035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drel_Murn/pseuds/Drel_Murn
Summary: Here are some disconnected pieces of history and various spirit tales from Step by Step.





	1. Tale: Origins

Inari came first, emerging from the seething heat of the beginning. He was spirit, was life. He threw himself against the chaos he came from, simply another part that fought - until he didn’t. Until he set his foot down and declared that there was Order. And wherever he walked there was Order, wherever he walked, spirits sprang from the Order he left in his wake.

 

Then came the siblings Makani and Era, Lord and Lady of Air, flitting around and thrown into chaos by anything that moves as a consequence of their original closeness to Chaos. Makani, the first born, was closer to the Chaos of before, and took the title of Lord of Storms. Era, the younger, took the title Lady of the Breeze.

 

La, Lord of Water and the Ocean, followed. Though more grounded than Makani and Era, Tui could be just as chaotic at times.

 

Then came the siblings Tui and Agni. They were known for their steadiness, despite occasional trickery from Chaos that shadowed them. Tui, Lady of the Moon and Water, fell in love with La’s chaos. Agni, Lord of Light, Lord of Fire and the Sun, danced with Makani.

 

The last Great Spirit was Kun, lady of the solid earth. She could be so many things at once, and with her solidity, she was the perfect foundation for Order to define himself in Inari’s wake.

 

And in the end, Chaos was left with only themself. At first, they hated Order, and all they stood for, and they tried to foil every plan Order maintained. But as the world grew, they found themself in love with the story, and soon they not only encouraged the stories, but created them. And in this time, Chaos came to an agreement with Order; they would do nothing more than prevent stagnation so long as there was a plot.


	2. Tale: Seasons, Days, and Nights

Not long after Inari declared Order, and Makani and Era, La, Tui and Agni, Kun and Chaos were created, the Great Spirits began to fight over the world. Raatu, the World’s spirit was not happy with their fighting, for

 

when Makani alone held the world, fierce storms raged and raged without end, leaving no time for plants to grow, washing away their roots, and drowning them, and

 

when Era alone held the world, plants flourished … too much, they lived and they grew easily, then they died and grew and died before the last had a chance to rot, stagnating, and

 

when Tui alone held the world, only the moon shone, it was far too cold, and there wasn’t enough light for plants to grow, and

 

when La alone held the world, it was covered entirely covered in salty brine the killed the plants, and

 

when Kun alone held the world, the ground was too solid for roots to penetrate or too many plants grew because the ground was too perfect, and

 

when Agni alone held the world, everything was hot, and plants could not grow, and

 

when Chaos and Inari alone held the world, plants did not grow at all, for they were of the spirit, and knew not how to let plants flourish.

 

Inari called the other Great Spirits to his house because an unhappy Raatu was a Raatu who stirred the massing smaller spirits into rebellion, and they talked for a long period of time. For the necessary warmth and water, Tui and her brother Agni would split their time with the world. For the ground to grow plants on, Kun would take a period of the time to influence the earth even as Agni and Tui worked. So that plants would move and not crowd each other, Era and Makani would take another period of time after her. Between Kun and the air siblings, Angi would influence the earth - yielding it to his sister every night - so the plants had the warmth to grow. Between Makani and Era, and Kun, La and Tui would take the earth and make it ready again for plants to grow.

 

This is how days, nights, and the seasons came to be.


	3. History: An Abridged History of Names

So, you may be wondering what Agni, with a name from the southeast Earth Kingdoms, is doing with a bunch of followers with Water Tribe names. Well, it happened like this:

 

The islands currently known as the Fire Islands once belonged to several Water Tribes, tribes shared by Tui and La (the remains of which have gathered with the one remaining, but hidden, tribe in the Foggy Swamp), and the predecessor culture of the Chameleon Peninsula extended much further into the Si Wong Desert, to the edge of the grasslands that are no longer there. Those grasslands were managed by firebenders and earthbenders native to the area, and they all prayed to both Lord Agni of Fire and Lady Kun of the Solid Earth. They shared one culture, and it was not unusual to see people of the Earth with Fire names, and people of Fire with Earth names.

 

The thing is, the Water Tribes on the islands were constantly searching for ways to calm the volcanoes. One day, a firebender from Chameleon Plains traveled to the islands of the Water Tribes. She was on an island when it erupted, and was able to help control the volcano much better than any of the waterbenders had been able to.

 

The Water Tribes tried to entice firebenders over, until they realized that they would never be able to get as many firebenders as they would like because most of the firebenders of the Chameleon Plains were so devoted to keeping the grassland healthy.

 

So they started kidnapping the firebenders. It wasn’t anything big at first, just one or two, but one or two spiraled into ten or twenty, spiraled into a thriving slave trade because everyone wanted to have their own private firebender to protect their home should their volcano erupt, even though it had been long proven that even firebenders were not able to entirely turn lava aside.

 

They sent waterbenders to destroy large tracts of grassland by pulling water out of the grasses in order to steer the firebenders to the desired spots. (This destruction increased the rate of desertification and led the the rest of the Chameleon Plains becoming a part of the Si Wong Desert much quicker than they would have naturally.)

 

When the people of the Chameleon Plains realized what had happened, they tried to protect the firebenders.

 

When it became clear that all of their efforts weren’t good enough, firebenders were sent away in droves. They were sent to join other firebenders in the pine forests to the far north and to various hot springs until firebenders stopped being born in the plains (which were now only another part of the desert). The Earth people who were left behind never stopped naming their children with the old names.

 

On the islands, the Water Tribes used practices typical of slavery (forcing slaves to take Water Tribe names, splitting families, taking children away before they could remember their names, punishment for speaking in a Fire tongue or referring to oneself with a Fire name) to eradicate the former culture of their slaves.

 

Then, because they’d brought enough firebenders to actually equal the amount of Water on the islands, especially because benders are especially high concentrations of their element, waterbenders started being born to Fire families, and firebenders started being born to Water families. When the Tribes realized what was happening, they inadvertently tipped the balance towards Fire by killing off any waterbenders born to Fire families, but not the firebenders born to their own families. They didn’t want slaves thinking they could free themselves in any manner, and a willing firebender did better than an unwilling one.

 

More and more firebenders were born, and less and less waterbenders, and even the firebenders born to Water families were sympathetic to the Fire families because they saw easily they too could have been - and in some cases were - enslaved too. The whole conflict boiled to a head when one of the tribe leaders killed her own son so that there was no chance that a firebender could lead a Water Tribe.

 

The firebenders won in the end and sent the tribes running. By that time however, they had already lost most of the culture of their ancestors on the Chameleon Plains.

 

That is why the great spirit Lord Agni of Fire has a name from the southeastern Earth Kingdoms.


End file.
